Hands on with Pepper, the affectionate robot

POMONA, CALIFORNIA — Pepper is one sweet-hearted robot – if you consider silicon, metal and plastic a heart.

A year ago, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, introduced Pepper to the world. The cloud-based, emotion-sensing humanoid robot was equal parts extraordinary and creepy. Since then, Softbank acquired Pepper’s developer, Aldebaran, ousted the company’s CEO and founder Bruno Maisonnier and basically stopped talking about when the Pepper would arrive in the U.S.

The robot is still not officially for sale, but there were, to my astonishment, three (!) working Peppers at the DARPA Robotics Challenge robot Expo in Pomona, California. Robot Challenge competitors have to complete eight disaster scenario tasks in under an hour at the Fairplex fairgrounds in Pomona. Pepper is not competing. Read more...